Will My Father Have Access to Long Term Healthcare?

I recently watched an episode of Jon Oliver’s show. My roommate had picked it to watch while we ate dinner.

I had never watched Jon Oliver before. I knew of him and what he talked about, but this would be my first episode. Interestingly enough, this episode was about long term healthcare in America.

Cost of elderly care

Oliver details the abysmal and shameful system the American healthcare has set up for elderly care. He discusses the cost per year, the conditions of living facilities in even some of the most expensive nursing homes in the country.

But the cost of a nursing home is not quite where we are with my father’s elderly care yet. Though it was saddening to see it might never be an option considering the cost and frightful quality of care.

Difficult to get coverage

What I was firstly interested in is understanding Medicare. According to the team of researchers Jon Oliver has, unskilled home health care will never ever be covered by Medicare.

If an elderly person wants to have the government pick up the tab for their care at home, they’ve got to have Medicaid. To have Medicaid you have to be "dirt poor" as Jon Oliver said it and not only that, you must meet the very basic and minimal asset holdings to qualify for Medicaid.

Help from untrained family

What I was secondly interested in hearing about was home health care. In this episode, Jon Oliver discusses how the majority of people in need of elderly care opt to have home health care but cannot afford it.

As a result, nearly 80 percent of home health care patients receive care from unpaid and untrained family members. Images and videos of patients in hospital beds that have been arranged to fit in their living room flash before the screen.

An interviewer asks a wife about the home health care she provides for her husband. She changes his feeding tube, cleans his wounds, and administers his medicine - all things she has never been trained to do in her life.

The risk involved

Put aside that this woman is not being paid for all this major care she is providing her husband, the risk that is being taken because no one has stepped up and set up a system to care for our sick and our elderly is just mind blowing.

There are only a select number of states that pay family members for being caregivers are Texas and most of the Midwest and South do not do that.

If that man dies because his wife improperly administered his medication or incorrectly placed a tube inside of him, she will have to live with that guilt - something a wife should never have to feel.

The struggle is real

Of course I was watching the show for my own selfish reasons. Is everything I have been researching and fighting for just been in my head? Is it really this hard to get my father the care he needs? What about now that he has dementia? Does that make a difference?

Watching this episode showed me it is real. The fight is real. People who live like we do, fighting for every single right, struggle. I spend hours on the phone with representative after representative looking for answers but here it was right in front of me.

I’ll never be able to give my father the home health care he needs, the aid he needs, without spending thousands of dollars a year or doing it myself.